Looking for some advice on a mead I was planning to start tomorrow. I made JAOM a few months ago, and it was awesome, so I wanted to do a play on it for my second mead. The plan is to basically follow the instructions for jaom, but with these ingredients (1g batch):

3# Blueberry honey
Pint of blueberries
Handful of raisins
1 clove
1/2 cinnamon stick
Top off with blueberry juice after the first couple days

Not sure what yeast to use though--I've got S-04 lying around, but I've made a cider with it that ended up being a little yeasty, which I wouldn't want in a mead. In the tradition of JAOM, I was thinking of just pitching bread yeast. Anyone use s-04 in a sweet mead with success? Any thoughts appreciated!

I haven't known of anyone ending up with extremely horrible results from normal bread yeast, there's just a lot of skepticism because of its name and the ABV range that it may yield (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I think you would be fine using bread yeast. Just be sure to let it age correctly. It should take the yeasty flavor out.

There's nothing to cause any bittering,unless you blitzed the blueberries, but it depends on the weight of the fruit as a fruit wine of that type would generally use something like 2 to 4lb of fruit for a gallon, so it may work out fine, but equally it could come out a bit light on fruit flavour.

__________________
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away". Tom Waits.

I have made a few meads with s 04 and I love it. I didn't detect very much yeastiness even though I consumed those meads young and cloudy. They were still fermenting even, so they were sweet but I had a significantly lower OG than what you will end up with.

I decided to stick with the bread yeast after all, given my limited experience thus far (though I might throw the S-04 in an experiment next week).

After fatbloke's response, I decided to add about half a lemon (most of the pith removed, only a bit of zest and juice) to add a bit of freshness and bitterness (I actually liked the slight bitterness in JAOM)

I figure if the fruit flavor is too light after primary, I can stick it in a secondary with some more--mostly I wanted to enhance the blueberry honey flavor, not have an in-your-face blueberry mead.

Ginger sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately I'm the only who likes it among my family! I might try a half-gallon with it.